Opening Keynote Address: Urban Biodiversity, Everyday Nature, and Environmental Justice

Efforts to understand ecological as well as social drivers of biodiversity in cities could help mitigate the effects of urbanization on species abundance. This talk will begin with a discussion of urban biodiversity and lessons learned about global patterns in bird diversity. Some application of these findings to a city like Portland will then be suggested, with emphasis on the importance of places in around where people live - everyday nature - to conservation. The talk will conclude with a discussion on the differences that occur among neighborhoods that may be tied to race, poverty, and other factors, and the implications of this for conservation.Keynote Speaker BiographyBiography Charlie Nilon is a professor of urban wildlife management at the University of Missouri. His research and teaching focus on urban wildlife conservation and on the human dimensions of wildlife conservation. Since 1997, he has been a co-principal investigator on the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES). The project in Baltimore and a similar one in Phoenix are the first two urban ecosystems included in the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research program. His work with the BES focuses on understanding how physical, ecological and socioeconomic factors influence the abundance and composition of vertebrate species. Because urban areas are homes for people as well as wildlife, Nilon’s research also considers the role of nature as part of an individual’s day-to-day environment, and environmental justice issues associated with access to nature. Since 2014 he has been co-director of the Urban Biodiversity Research Coordination Network (UrBioNet), a project that is developing a database of biodiversity in the world’s cities and also developing a network researchers and practitioners who work on different aspects of urban nature